Page 60 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

n a ture 1361
nature 1361

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should
listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important
than the feelings for pictures. • Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890)

Nature and Humans role as agents of geographic change. Human history—
Exploring the other side of the equation—how to place emerging during the Renaissance out of a growing self-
nature in history—requires considering the place of consciousness about the power of human control over
humans in nature. Glacken’s Traces on the Rhodian Shore nature and pushed by the belief that such power distin-
covers the preindustrial history of humans and nature. guishes humans from the rest of nature—became a nar-
He posits that throughout time the West has regarded rative about harnessing the elements (through arts such
the natural world with several questions, all arising from as alchemy, which was a medieval chemical science and
the sense that the Earth is an inherently habitable place speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmuta-
for humankind: Is this Earth apparently so fitting an envi- tion of base metals into gold) and transforming the
ronment for organic life, “a purposely made creation”? landscape for aesthetic and economic purposes. Just as
What is the influence of the Earth’s climates, physical ter- the Age of Exploration contributed to an emerging sense
rain, and continental configuration, that is, the environ- of nature’s history, it also offered comparative evidence
ment in which life is embedded, on the shape of human of the interactions between human history and natural
culture and on individual health and morality? Finally— history. In addition to new animals and plants, the dis-
and coming increasingly into play from the eighteenth covery and exploration of the New World offered an
century to the present—in what manner have humans aspect of nature seemingly untouched by human artifice.
through their artifice acted as “geographic agents” chang- Glacken says that by the eighteenth century the French
ing nature “from its hypothetical pristine condition” naturalist George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–
(Glacken 1967, vii)? 1788), relied on the contrasts between Europe and the
Much of people’s attempt to describe the history of Americas to construct his history of the Earth as ulti-
nature has centered on the first issue—on teleological mately “seconded” by the history of human striving. Buf-
aspects of nature. Although the idea of nature as a prod- fon, who little appreciated the wild, uninhabited places
uct of design arose independently of the concept of envi- on Earth, saw second nature as both an improvement of
ronmental influence, each reinforced the other. Organic first nature and an improvement of human civilization.
life (including humans and their cultures) was seen as
adapting to “purposefully created harmonious condi- Agents of
tions” (Glacken 1967, vii). Human artifice, distinct from Geographic Change
“first” nature and exemplifying the human place in the In the New World the importance of modern humans as
chain of being just below the Creator, constituted a “sec- agents of geographic change was more obvious. Early
ond” nature cultivating and adding improvements to the commentators such as the Swedish botanist Peter Kalm
design. From the Greeks until the eighteenth century West- (1716–1779) noted that settlers were replacing old envi-
ern conceptions of nature in human history portrayed it ronments with new and raised questions about their
as the world out there to which humans adapt—but part impact on first nature and whether second nature
of that adaptation is to order nature. Human creations of improved the prospects for human habitation. Industri-
second nature, through domesticating animals and hunt- alization in the United States and Britain accelerated the
ing, through cultivating crops and digging canals, settled transformations of nature, sharpened the distinctions be-
wild lands. However, until the seventeenth and eigh- tween city, country, and wild places, and dislocated in-
teenth centuries such activity assumed an inviolate sta- creasing populations from labor on the land to labor
bility in first nature. inside factories.
As nature itself began to develop a contingent history Romanticism, a transcontinental philosophy that
during the modern era, humans began to recognize their granted privilege to first nature as an organic force in